The most disgusting prank George Clooney ever pulled on another actor: “I’m not sure it’s how I want to be remembered”
In Hollywood, people talk about George Clooney‘s love for pranking in hushed tones. The extremely handsome, extremely successful actor is one of the industry’s most acclaimed leading men, yet in real life, he has the sense of humour of a particularly juvenile 14-year-old boy. Brilliantly, he’s always been willing to push his pranks to the limits of good taste and beyond. However, he once went so far over the line that he gave himself pause. In fact, it led him to wonder if this singularly disgusting prank was the legacy he wanted to leave behind.
During Clooney’s days as a struggling actor trying to make his way in showbusiness, he roomed with Richard Kind, who would go on to star in Spin City and Curb Your Enthusiasm. The idea of someone as debonair as Clooney living with one of TV’s greatest oddball weirdos is hilarious in and of itself. However, it gets even funnier when you find out Clooney was the furthest thing from the polished, classy Hollywood A-lister he is these days during that period of his life.
At that time, Clooney mostly wiled away his days auditioning for jobs he didn’t get and watching both the East Coast and West Coast showings of each episode of Jeopardy. Amusingly, he admitted on the Smartless podcast that he regularly memorised the answers from the East Coast showing so that he could impress Kind later that evening with his seemingly voluminous knowledge.
Kind wasn’t Clooney’s only roommate at the time, though. Kind also had a tiny kitten that would sleep on his chest and roam the apartment while its owner was at work. The cat’s litter tray was in the bathroom next to the toilet, and one day Clooney felt the urge to be a good roomie, so he scooped out the poo and flushed it down the commode while Kind was out.
When Kind returned, though, he looked at the empty litter tray in confusion and said to Clooney, “My little kitty. He hasn’t taken a shit in, I think, three days.” The future Ocean’s Eleven star chose to stay silent when Kind revealed this information, though, because an idea was already forming in his sick, aesthetically pleasing head.
Over the next few days, Clooney continued to flush cat poo down the toilet without telling Kind, who became so worried about his seemingly constipated cat that he took it to the vet. The tiny pet was prescribed Metamucil, a fibre supplement that works as a laxative. Clooney chuckled, “Now this little kitty is shitting 15 times a day, and I am scooping it all up because I have nothing else to do.”
Amazingly, Clooney kept up this charade for weeks while his roommate became increasingly afraid his cat was terribly ill. When asked why he did it, Clooney mused, “I have no idea why. It’s just funny.” It was only after these few weeks, however, that inspiration struck Clooney like a lightning bolt. Suddenly, the punchline to his long con revealed itself, and he knew what he had to do. “I must take a shit in the cat box,” Clooney realised. It was the only thing that made sense.
Horrifyingly, instead of simply laughing at the idea and calling it a day, Clooney crouched over the tiny cat’s litter tray and did his business. Halfway through, though, an uncomfortable thought entered his head. He confessed, “Now there is this moment when I’m squatted down over a cat box where I’m going, ‘Really?’ I mean, it’s funny. It’s good. But I’m not sure it’s how I want to be remembered.”
Clooney is nothing if not fanatically committed to making people miserable through the medium of pranks, though, so he saw this one through to the bitter end. After taking a dump in the tiny cat box, he waited for Kind to get home and watched him go into the bathroom. When he heard a panicked, “Oh my God”, and saw Kind rushing out exclaiming, “You’re not going to believe this. You have to see this,” Clooney knew he’d succeeded in his mission.
“I’m laughing so hard that tears are streaming down my eyes,” revealed Clooney, who watched as the gears turned in Kind’s head. He smiled, “Slowly, he figures it out. He realises that I have been shovelling the cat shit out for weeks, and he gets madder and madder and madder.”
An incandescent Kind stared in disbelief at his roommate – who he probably believed had revealed himself as some kind of handsome psychopath – and uttered a sentence that only made Clooney crack up further.
“I understand humour,” Kind yelled. “Defecation doesn’t make me laugh!”
